autism can present itself socially but females are naturally more social creatures and so we learn how to abide by the rules in our social environment and we can camouflage or mask and honestly that's part of the reason that females are so under diagnosed to mask or camouflage is to cover up how you would normally interact with someone else by taking on different characteristics that you notice other people are doing so for example in situations where i'm talking to somebody that i'm not super familiar with i don't like making eye contact i can't actually hear the
words that are being said when i make eye contact with someone so i find different places on the face to focus that's not the eyes but it still looks like i'm making eye contact so i'm masking my desire to just be like looking off in the distance while i'm talking to someone which actually helps me listen to you and i'm trying to appear more socially normal by pretending like i'm making eye contact that's an example of masking or camouflaging what i want to do today i recreated a chart that i found when i was in
the process of my getting my diagnosis that really opened my eyes to how autism can present differently in females i think that this chart originally came from rudy simone in one of their books and i'll have to i'll put a link to that in the description this was originally posted on help for aspergers.com which is no longer an active site but i love this chart the only copy that i can find online is blurry and hard to read and so i've reformatted it and made it colorful and shortened the descriptions a little bit so that
it all fits in one kind of easy to digest page and that's what i'm going to be reading off of today but this did not originally come from me it came from i believe rudy simone and i'm just going to kind of add my tidbits to it as i walk you through it today all right so we're going to start over here under appearance and personal habits so first of all you might notice if you're an autistic female that you prefer to dress more comfortably now this doesn't mean that you don't wear heels and that
type of thing but you might just naturally gravitate towards t-shirts or comfortable jeans or sensible shoes you might spend less time on grooming and upkeep i hate caring for my hair like i remember in college one of my roommates was like why are you brushing your hair like that like i just didn't know you might have an eccentric personality in our appearance you might come across as young for your age and your preferences your appearances and your taste i'm 32 and people still call me like sweetie sugar honey i hate it but i think i
just come across as younger in a lot of ways autistic females are usually more expressive than autistic males so that's one way that it appears that we might not be autistic to the outside world it's like oh you're so expressive and social but again that can be part of the camp camouflaging and masking that i was talking about earlier you might also have androgynous tastes but a feminine appearance you might camouflage socially and you may lack a sense of personal identity so for me i realized whenever i would take personality tests and stuff because i
love taking those it would always be kind of base be based off of maybe like the people i had been around most recently or the latest movie i had seen or tv show because i just had a hard time pinpointing who i exactly was and i still do because i naturally just kind of take on other people's characteristics so that i can camouflage you might retreat into reading and or tv and movies you might manage your stress with rules discipline and routines that is me and you're probably happiest at home or other controlled environments my
happy place is on my couch or in my bed under my weighted blanket and give me my cats okay let's hop over to intellect education and vocation you might have been considered gifted shy or sensitive when young my psychologist says let's replace sensitive with responsive you might have overt or covert learning deficits i wrote covert on there that was for me because i feel like i have plenty of learning deficits but my teachers were never aware of them because i hid them really well often musical or artistic i am a professional flute player and i
love playing the piano and as a hobby i collect all of the instruments i have a purple saxophone a gem bae an ocarina of a guitar i have a ukulele i have a piccolo yeah i don't know what system of counting i'm using on my hands but i have a lot of instruments you may have a savant skill or another strong talent you may gravitate towards computers and technology or writing languages in psychology i feel like i could give myself a degree in psychology because i've studied so much of it just out of compulsion you
also might have many self-taught skills you may be highly educated but struggle with social aspects of school i always had so much anxiety in college about i wouldn't join a sorority or a fraternity because i just did not understand i didn't understand it you might have a partial degree or two you can be really passionate about one course of study and then change your mind and do something else completely and be really passionate about that that element of myself drives me crazy you may have trouble staying employed or finding work i have had so many
different jobs over the years i've been a cupcake baker and opened my own bakery in my house teacher i've been a substitute teacher i've been a fitness instructor a lot of things so you might be slow to comprehend some things due to sensory and cognitive issues that may or may not be apparent to other people but like for me in conversations if somebody tells a joke i feel that i might be one of the last people to actually understand that joke but i'll go ahead and laugh just to make it look like i'm part of
the conversation you might prefer written rather than verbal instructions whenever teachers would tell me to remember something like in college i wrote every i typed every single word on my computer i needed everything in writing you might have obsessions that are less obvious than males who have autism spectrum disorder special interest is a pretty significant characteristic for autistic people in general and women might be more able to camouflage that and make it appear less intense like you're not going to be in a room full of trains all day every day and i know that's a
little bit stereot stereotypical okay let's go to emotional and physical you might be emotionally immature or sensitive for me i'm very sensitive or responsive you might have frequent anxiety and or fear that's me so much anxiety especially in grade school in high school in college and adulthood and parenthood you might be more open to discussing feelings than asd males you might have strong sensory issues or be prone to overwhelm i'm really picky about what i eat because i don't like the textures of certain foods i get overwhelmed by really soft touch i hate it and
it makes me really mad you might be prone to depression or you may have been diagnosed as bipolar or manic depressive instead of and labeling it as autism so if you had other diagnoses like for me in the past i was diagnosed ocd and adhd i still think the adhd is really fitting but i think the ocd was more asd in general so you might have had other diagnoses that don't really seem to fit you might be super sensitive to medication and anything you put in or on your body that's me and my psychologist has
said that oftentimes autistic people can have paradoxical effects with medication so if something is supposed to work one way it might work the complete opposite way for you so weird another thing that 9 out of 10 autistic people i saw that statistic somewhere i'll have to find that and dig that up 9 out of 10 people have some type of gastrointestinal issue stomach issues when you eat certain foods indigestion acid reflux that kind of stuff you might stim to soothe when you're when you're agitated a lot of people you know think of autism as kind
of like hand flapping but for me stimming is like i constantly move my fingers and tap on things which i kind of got away with because i was a band nerd i also click my teeth i just go back and forth with my teeth in my mouth nobody else knows i'm doing it but i do it constantly and then when i was in grade school i blinked just all the time you might be prone to temper tantrums or crying meltdowns in public it's not necessarily because you're being dramatic it's just because you're overwhelmed by all
of the sensory information that you're processing you also might be very physical when you're happy i love dancing i dance all the time my mother-in-law got me a sign for the kitchen that says in this kitchen we dance you might hate injustice and being misunderstood it can often incite anger in you i know like we should all hate injustice but there's just a certain element of it especially for autistic people i think because we're so used to being misunderstood that it just enrages us you can also be prone to mutism when stressed mutism means you
shut down and you don't talk and you may have a unique vocal quality or you might speak in monotone so it might be hard to believe right now but a lot of times when i'm processing things i'm just very monotone and i talk like this and i don't have much facial expression and for a while i've been married for almost 11 years now but for a while that was kind of an issue in our marriage because my husband is like i don't know what you're thinking i don't know what you're feeling you seem like you're
very put off or removed from the situation i'll be like no i don't know what you're talking about i know exactly what you said and i care about this very deeply or i can also be really expressive okay so the last column social and relationships like i said your words and your actions might often be misunderstood we we tend to have like our own mental landscape that is just so different from what other people experience and actually communicating our experiences can be very difficult you might be perceived to be cold-natured or self-centered again kind of
in my marriage i seem cold and removed sometimes because my brain is way out there and i'm processing everything while somebody's trying to talk to me and that can seem like i'm being cold when really i'm just trying to stay up to speed in the conversation you might be shy or mute i was unbelievably shy all throughout grade school high school in any extracurricular activity i was part of i was very shy but i loved being on stage i loved leading things because i think that social i think that social interaction of like i know
what my role is i'm talking and you listen i understand that and i don't have to wait for the back and forth of conversation and so i really like being in a leadership role because i understand what's expected of me you might not go out much or you might prefer to only go out with your partner that's me i fought that for a long time and now i just say no to a lot of social events i try to limit my social events to one outing per week it's hard to do that especially when you
have kids because then you have to start friending your kids moms and that's really hard um you might get fired up when talking about your passions or special interests like me making this youtube channel about autism just because i love talking about it you might prefer to spend time with animals i have two cats and they're like my favorite i lay in bed all morning just petting my cat and like singing to him those are my kids in the background like singing to him and petting him and calling him all the names you might not
do as many girly things as your friends and you might not have as many girlfriends as other girls that you know so that's kind of me i had like a close-knit circle of friends i still do and i love them but they're not like super girly girls and we don't really do girly real things you might shut down in social situations when you get overloaded but you might be way better at masking it than males who have autism and that's one of the other reasons why we aren't diagnosed near as frequently as males because we
can be social and we can pretend like we're really good at it and it becomes a skill that we learn and we can almost like employ that skill as a performance but then after we do we're completely exhausted and we need recovery time you might have trouble maintaining close friendships that can happen sometimes because you don't really understand the give and take of relationships in terms of like you need way more down time than the other person does you want to stay home you don't want to be as adventurous or or explore and then you
may choose to remain celibate or alone but if you are in a relationship you might take it very very seriously and then due to sensory issues you might thoroughly enjoy sex or strongly dislike it because again we talked about all the sensory stuff and you just take in so much in terms of what you see and hear and feel and experience and so that can either be really calming or it can be really upsetting and then lastly you can be super awkward whenever you're trying to flirt because your facial expressions don't really match and you
don't really understand the give and take you don't really understand like physical proximity and when to touch someone and when to back away so it can be kind of interesting because it doesn't look like neurotypical flirting at all so like i said i found this chart when i was in the diagnostic process and it really opened my eyes i called my best friend immediately and i was like do you relate to this do you relate to this do you relate to this and she's like yes no no no no yes no no and i was
like i relate to all of them i hope that this is helpful to you again i didn't create this chart i i redesigned it i will try to post a link to this in my in the description and make it accessible on like another website and if you want more information about that i'll post the book that i think it came from i've been trying to do my research and like attribute this to the right person let me hear from you in the comments which of these traits do you find yourself really relating to i'm
curious to hear so hope everybody has a great day remember being unique is awesome being autistic is a superpower even though some days it might not feel like that and i'm here to help you with any questions that you might have and hopefully we can kind of learn about each other in the comments and learn how to navigate this often really confusing world of autism
